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Structural Holes and Good Ideas

2004/09/01 by Ronald S. Burt, Ronald S. Burt · 117 citations
Business, Management and Accounting · #Innovation and Knowledge Management #Management and Organizational Studies #Intellectual Capital and Performance Analysis

paper · doi:10.1086/421787

Abstract

This article outlines the mechanism by which brokerage provides social capital. Opinion and behavior are more homogeneous within than between groups, so people connected across groups are more familiar with alternative ways of thinking and behaving. Brokerage across the structural holes between groups provides a vision of op-tions otherwise unseen, which is the mechanism by which brokerage becomes social capital. I review evidence consistent with the hy-pothesis, then look at the networks around managers in a large American electronics company. The organization is rife with struc-tural holes, and brokerage has its expected correlates. Compensation, positive performance evaluations, promotions, and good ideas are disproportionately in the hands of people whose networks span structural holes. The between-group brokers are more likely to ex-press ideas, less likely to have ideas dismissed, and more likely to have ideas evaluated as valuable. I close with implications for cre-ativity and structural change. The hypothesis in this article is that people who stand near the holes in a social structure are at higher risk of having good ideas. The argument is that opinion and behavior are more homogeneous within than between groups, so people connected across groups are more familiar with alter-

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